Everything I learned from self-publishing my 1st book

A warm welcome to our Home by the Beech Trees 🍃 I’m Anne of Baggebo, a Danish author, self-publisher & a stay-at-home-mom. I write stories from our 100 year old farmhouse in the Danish Countryside and personal essays on balancing authorship, publishing, motherhood, homemaking & gardening.

My Dear Reader,

In the early spring this year I published my very first book ever.

It was a small print, and it was a collaboration with the local library. 10 local writers, including myself, contributed with a short story each. I only printed 100 books, and I sold more than half of them on the publishing day.

For all my Danish readers, you can still buy the book here.

Now, I know some of you are aware that I’m writing a book these days. And since I’m planning on self-publishing the book in the late autumn, I thought it would be a good thing to spend some time on my self-publishing learnings (of which there were many!), and also, all the things that I want to do differently this time around (out of which there are just as many!)

My experience with self-publishing my first book

Let me start out by saying that it was a very, very good experience to self-publish my first book, over-all. With that said, I still have not seen a return on the investment of printing, illustrating and paying the writers for their work, but I’ll get back to why I think that is later.

Firstly, let me tell you some more about how it came about:

It was very much on a whim that I offered to publish the book. I thought a physical book would be nice for all of us writers, but also for all of our families and friends to able to attain a copy. And since I have been interested in publishing for a long while I thought it a very good and honorable chance for me to try it out and get some much needed experience.

And learn, I did! When I had finally set everything up and pressed Print (more on how I did it beneath), it felt like I had unlocked a new super power.

It was very intimidating, but having the other writer’s feedback and working in close collaboration with the library, the writers and the illustrator made me commit to the part in a way I had never done before - and for that, I was highly rewarded in my skill and local net-work.

Still, there were some things that I wish I had known beforehand, and that I think could have saved me from the lack of investment and burn-out that I felt in the weeks around the publishing day.

But, before we get into all the things I'm doing differently the second time, here’s everything I learned from the first experience:

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